Joy Callaway Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of Standalone Novels
The Fifth Avenue Artists Society | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Secret Sisters | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Greenbrier Resort / The Grand Design | (2022) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
All the Pretty Places of the Gilded Age | (2023) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
What the Mountains Remember | (2024) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Star of Camp Greene | (2025) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Sing Me Home to Carolina | (2025) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Joy Callaway is the author of bestselling historical fiction novels from North Carolina.
When she was in her teenage years, she went to Marshal University where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Public Relations and Journalism. Later, she went to the University of South Carolina where she got her master’s degree in Mass Communication.
She published “The Fifth Avenue Artists Society” which was her debut novel in 2016 and has never looked back since. Callaway now likes to call herself an author and full-time mother.
She makes her home in Charlotte North Carolina where she lives with John her husband and John and Alevia her two children. She can sometimes be found at the local Book Club or her many book events.
The author has said that she got into storytelling because her parents always insisted that she write stories or read books instead of watching TV. She would then get interested in family history since her relatives loved telling tales about the lives of their ancestors.
When Joy Callaway was still a child, she loved to write small articles on historical topics that she would then send to magazines. She would sometimes sell her articles and stories door to door which did not make her any cooler.
She always loved writing or reading stories but as she got older, life responsibilities took over. After graduation from college, she started working as a public relations practitioner, and for some time, she forgot that becoming a fiction author was ever a career option.
Nonetheless, while she had almost given up on becoming a writer, she never stopped reading. One summer she read all manner of books and this was the time that she realized that maybe she wanted to try writing one.
Her first attempt was two books too long and full of all manner of publishing mistakes that it was no wonder it was never published. However, it was this that gave her the confidence she needed and got her addicted to writing.
As for her inspiration, Joy Callaway gets it from almost any place. But when it comes to literary sources of inspiration, her favorite authors include Jane Austen, Diana Gabaldon, Edith Wharton, and Beatriz Wharton.
If she was not a fiction author, she has said that she would probably do public relations full-time rather than part-time as she does now.
Joe Callaway’s novel “The Fifth Avenue Artists Society” is an enthralling story that tells of four artistic sisters. They live on the outskirts of high society in New York during the gilded age.
The novel opens in 1891 and introduces Virginia Loftin whose only desire is to become a celebrated novelist, even though that is unheard of for a woman.
She also desires to marry her first love, neighbor, and best friend Charlie. But Ginny is left devastated when Charlie makes a marriage proposal to another woman. She isolates herself from her family and obsessively rewrites their story in a notebook.
She works feverishly but she cannot find any success until she attends a salon hosted at a Fifth Avenue mansion, which is the home of John the handsome friend of her brother.
Among the writers, painters, actors, and musicians she gets back to being herself and even blooms under the romantic attention of John. But just as she begins to forget her ex, he comes back into her life.
His entry leaves her torn between a budding relationship with a man that she thinks is too good to be true and a lifetime full of complicated feelings.
The darkest shadows are sometimes cast by the brightest lights and as she tentatively navigates the high society world, she starts suspecting that not all is as it may seem.
When a close friend is found dead in the Fifth Avenue mansion, Ginny begins investigating and discovers her true feelings about love, family, and art.
“The Grand Design” by Joe Callaway is a story set in 1908 that introduces Dorothy Tuckerman. She has only one chance to prove that the choices she made were indeed the right ones. She is chafing under the beige and bland traditions in her socialite circles.
Her imagination has always been sparked by the annual summer trips undertaken by the aristocracy to the West Virginia Greenbrier Resort. It is there among all the beauty that Dorothy gets a taste of the adventure and passion she wants from an Italian racecar driver.
However, her family intervenes and she finds herself sentenced to the life she was hoping to escape. Almost four decades later and as the Second World War is drawing to a close, Dorothy had done everything most people living in her times believed a woman should not.
She had scandalously divorced her husband and shocked everyone by establishing the first interior design firm in the United States.
She is now back to the Greenbrier hoping to restore it to its former glories and hopefully even surpass them. She is driven by the fact that her company’s future is at stake and makes use of unconventional and daring ideas as he hopes to turn around things.
Based on a true story it is a thrilling tale that follows one woman’s quest to get out of the shackles put on her by society.
Joe Callaways’ novel “Secret Sisters” is a work set in 1881 Illinois that introduces Beth Carrington. She is a sophomore in college whose two goals are to establish Beta Xi Beta, a woman’s fraternity, and obtain a medical degree.
The former is aimed at helping young women to support and connect with each other while attending college at Whitsitt which is male-dominated. Since she is the only female in the medical program, she is frequently called out for not going with a more fitting course of study such as secretarial studies.
In the meantime, the college had banned secret organizations and by meeting together and creating a sense of camaraderie in a dank basement she and her fraternity colleagues risk expulsion.
If she is to get her fraternity recognized, she will need the help of Iota Gamma president Grant Richardson who is a Whitsitt family scion. She had become acquainted with the man since she has long been friends with Will Buchanan his fraternity brother.
But he is a staunchly traditional man who believes women’s organizations have nothing to offer. However, he is fascinated by Beth and agrees to help her as much as he can. What she does know is that he is planning some treachery and cannot be trusted.